John Yettaw, the American whose attempt to make contact with Aung San Suu Kyi cost the Burmese opposition leader an extra 18 months under house arrest has himself been released from imprisonment. Suu Kyi, meanwhile, remains under lock and key to pay the price for his stupidity.
August, 2009
Step up Rudd: well-behaved men seldom make history
If PM Kevin Rudd wants to go down in history as a great leader, then he will have to make hard decisions that may affect his popularity. Like, showing courage on climate change, writes Ross Gittins.
Taliban out to destroy elections
Afghanistan’s elections are looking increasingly tumultuous, with reports of the Taliban beating voters, corruption and vote buying. It is feared that low voter turnout will affect the legitimacy of the Afghan government.
Fitton: Figures raise a red flag on China
This week’s Nielsen poll shows 58% of Australians think Kevin Rudd is doing a good job of managing Australia’s relationship with China — and that’s bad news for Malcolm Turnbull, says Daniel Flitton.
Fitzgerald: Turnbull may weather the storm
Malcolm Turnbull’s ratings are looking pretty dismal, but other Liberal leaders like John Howard and former Victorian Premier Jeff Kennett saw similarly poor numbers before going on to election glory, says Ross Fitzgerald.
Meet Ahmadinejad’s Cabinet nominees
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has identified six of the ministers he intends to nominate for his new cabinet — naming three women in the mix in an apparent move to improve his embattled image.
Turnbull sinks to new lows
Today’s Nielsen poll shows a two party preferred of 56/44, while Malcolm Turnbull’s net approval rating has hit a new low of -29%. You can’t win a chook raffle from that position, let alone an election, says Possum Comitatus.
Breakfast Media Wrap: Voters support ETS but will they if predicted price rises come?
The pick of this morning’s media
Journalists to get crafty with artisanal news
What would happen if news — and journalism — turned artisanal? Neatly crafted sentences, specialist niche audiences and a finely tuned use of technology might help save the media.
US court for terror suspects: Gitmo 2.0?
Barack Obama may have promised to close Gitmo, but there are ‘a thousand little Gitmos’ across the US, where terror suspects are being given unfair trials, writes Petra Bartosiewicz.
A little GOOP to tide you over
Missing your weekly GOOP while Gwyneth Paltrow is on holidays? Never fear, Craig Brown takes a stab at Gwyneth’s hot tips.
Breakfast Media Wrap: Election speculation: The Oz keeps repeating a tax story lie
The pick of Sunday morning’s media
From news to booze: The NYT bottle-o
The New York Times is joining the WSJ and Forbes in the booze trade, launching its own wine club. A perfect match for the paper’s toffy readership, or just opening itself up to more “chardonnay left” jokes?
Seek and you will keep searching: Google, Twitter, RSS feeds
Thanks to technology, we’ve begun to resemble “lab rats that endlessly pressed a lever to give themselves a little electrical jolt to the brain”, writes Emily Yoffe.
Rethinking Africa
Despite the health and economic problems in some African countries, the continent itself is in much better shape than most people think, says Charles Kenny.
Space snacks: creating a menu for Mars
Freeze-dried shrimp cocktail and irradiated beef fajitas: modern space food has gotten pretty sophisticated. The LA Times meets the scientists-cum-chefs responsible for packing 6570 meals for NASA’s next trip to Mars.
The war time diary of a B-17 navigator
This mission-by-mission account of flying and surviving as the navigator on a B-17 in WWII makes for compelling reading, says Ben Sandilands.
Warner Bros to build Lego movie
In the wake of the box office rogering by the recent Hasbro toys-adapted Transformers movies, comes reports that Warner Bros are toying with the idea of bringing a Lego-fest to the big screen, writes Luke Buckmaster.
Gannett axe Pulitzer winning cartoonist
The latest casualty of cutbacks by US newspaper publisher Gannett is Pulitzer-prize winning cartoonist Matt Davies, whose position was amongst 50 purged from New York’s Journal News.
Microsoft get bitter in browser wars
Is it a case of sour grapes for the former king-pins of the internet browsers? A senior Microsoft Internet Explorer executive says she’s “skeptical” of claims by rival Mozilla that its Firefox browser has been downloaded over one billion times, deriding it as “interesting maths”.
VIDEO: If advertisers created the stop sign
An oldie but a goodie: if the stop sign was created by a modern advertising agency. Let’s action that!
What are Obama’s favourite words? Hint: not ‘gay’ or ‘war’.
Politico have crunched the numbers and examined what topics Barack Obama discusses the most. His favourites? Domestic issues: jobs, health and the economy.
Exxon pays for killing protected birds
Oil giant Exxon Mobil has pleaded guilty to killing at least 85 protected birds — including hawks, owls and waterfowls — in the US in the last five years. They have been fined A$700,000.
